I Am Not The Boy Who Lived
by Guardian of Hope
Summary: Six glimpses into the mind of Charlus "Charlie" Potter, the so-called Boy-Who-Lived from age one to age 21. (Wrong BWL, Gen, One-Shot)


AN:This is a character story from the pov of a Potter Twin, told in short moments at ages 1, 7, 11, 15, 19, and 21. Originally intended to be drabbles, but they kind of didn't work out that way.

* * *

1.

I have to be Harry today. The OTHER took Mooey and Mama and Papa say he's Charlie. I want to be Charlie, because Charlie gets to do the naughty things and make Mama laugh. Harry has to be good and quiet and sweet and that's no fun. I don't like Pongy, he has pokey things that taste funny. Maybe later I can get Mooey back and make the OTHER be Harry again. He's better at being good anyways.

7.

It's not fair! Why does HE get told to go play and not ME? I want to play in the mud puddles too! HE gets to be muddy and chase frogs and play on the swings. I don't want to read these stupid books. I don't care about that stupid moldy-shorts. Why do I have to be the Boy-Who-Lived all the time? HE has a scar too! HE was there when stupid moldy-shorts went away! Why can't he be the Boy-Who-Lived? HE WANTS to read the books and say the words, why can't HE do it? I want to fly on my broom and chase Unca Siri and climb trees and, and, and, IT'S NOT FAIR!

11.

Hogwarts! All my life I have heard "When you get to Hogwarts", and it has been a talisman of faith and good fortune. There are towers that touch the clouds and rooms where it rains indoors and nobody gets wet. I have a new friend in Ron Weasley, and even hearing Draco Malfoy's bratty whining cannot dampen my good mood. The lightening boy is elsewhere in the crowd of first years, talking with a girl whose hair is so big that it makes her head looks twice the size of everyone else and the boy who brought a toad to school. Everyone is looking at me, because I am the Boy Who Lived, and I am their talisman of faith and good fortune. All that is left is for the Sorting Hat to prove that I am a true Lion's Son.

15.

How dare he? How could he ask her to Hogsmeade? She was supposed to be mine. I'm the Boy-Who-Lived, I have the moon on my brow and fire in my heart. Ginny Weasley was supposed to be my girlfriend. Did I not pull Gryffindor's sword to save her? The boy with the lightning scar helped, spoke the words to open the passageways and who killed the diary, but I'm the hero, I'm supposed to get the girl. Every story says that the Hero gets the girl, not the- the sidekick! Of all the girls in Gryffindor, Ginny Weasley and Hermione Granger are the best, and I cannot have either. I will not ask Hermione because my best friend adores her and now the lightning boy is taking Ginny to Hogsmeade.

19.

"I defy you," I screamed, "as I have always defied you. I survived your foul magic as a baby, and I will not succumb on this day." The words were mine, although my brother told me afterwards that I'd read one too many fantasy adventures growing up. The defiance was mine, born of a life hearing that I was the great hero, dreaming of the day when I would raise my wand and free my world of darkness. Those dreams and that defiance were shattered by a laugh that will ever haunt me and the words that followed. "You are not the baby I tried to kill that night." The green light that followed had been haunting my dreams for eighteen years, only this time I saw the truth as my brother, the lightning boy, stepped between me and my enemy. Again.

21.

My brother is the Man Who Won, and I'm surprisingly okay with that. I mean, when it happened, when the truth came out, I was completely and utterly humiliated of course. Seventeen years I'd been the Boy Who Lived, I smiled when the camera flash blinded me and began training long before I ever saw the high towers of Hogwarts and definitely well before that mangy Hat perched on my brow and screamed Gryffindor. No one ever thought my brother was anything more than a talented Wizard, a fitting brother to the Wizarding World's Hero, and that's okay. They call him The Man Who Won now, and I've yet to hear that title without my brother insisting that he couldn't have defeated Voldemort without me, that victory was as much my doing as his. I'm surprisingly okay with my brother, The Man Who Won, hiding behind me when the reporters and the fans show up. He did the hard part. Twice.

* * *

Charlie and Harry in their first year is pre-Voldemort. I have twin cousins and I have spent years getting them mixed up, and I was thinking the other day, what if we were calling them by the wrong name. So this kind of led into the idea that baby Charlie and baby Harry were always getting mixed up because they could only be told apart by their toys. "Charlie" was the twin who always had Moony (Mooey) a stuffed dog/wolf and "Harry" was the twin who had Prongs (Pongy), a stag. (I wanted to joke that Sirius had switched them at least twice, and was teased over it, and Remus has looked guilty on occasion when the subject came up, but it didn't work.)

Also, Charlie at 15 is a spoiled brat expecting to get everything he wants on a platter, because that is a sad condition of a number of teenagers of that age.

Also, Charlie at 7, I think this was the probable train of thought that would lead a Twin/Sib who lived into becoming a bully. In short, that Harry would be 'sent to play' while Charlie had to train would make Charlie angry and jealous and become hurtful to Harry for getting to play when he, Charlie, had to read books and learn spells.


End file.
